I never find it easy to work on the
first days of Spring, especially when, as in the Pacific Northwest, Spring
comes only after months of drizzly gloom. When the pale, wet sun comes out for
the first time, all I really want to do is go outside, smell the still-wet
pines and salt-breeze, and bask in the young Spring sunshine. In the midst of
that over-bright euphoria, it feels impossible to do anything useful. On the
rare occasions when I have been able to overcome the urge to shut my books, the
results have been remarkable, but just as often, I have found myself unable to
think straight, meandering from thing to thing and always ending by staring out
the window. When I am able to make something of that Spring-day euphoria, it
feels like bottled sunshine poured still-glowing on the page. When I am not —
well, it doesn’t bear describing.
There is a similar sensation when a
thesis crystalizes in your mind. First, there is that golden moment when you
finally say, “I have it! It makes sense!” You might even get to the
point of writing it down, before you begin to ask yourself what “it”
really is, how you got to “it”, and how you are possibly going to
explain “it” to anyone else. The jump between “thesis” and
“paper” is just as large as that between spring-day euphoria and warm
bottled sunshine.
How does one get from the first to
the second? I am sure the precise answer varies by person, and by mood, and by
day of the week. The closest I can come is that it requires both concentration
and patience. A thesis, however brilliant, can only be a starting point. What
seems natural to us must necessarily seem arcane to anyone else, unless we
explain it to them first. Before we can make anyone understand why
“it” makes sense, we have to state all our underlying assumptions,
leading the reader through the leg-work we have already done. This is tedious,
or it can seem so when you yourself are already basking in the bright sunshine
of a sharp, clearly defined thesis, but when we cannot bring ourselves to walk
backwards through our sources, that bright sunshine fades all too quickly into
a sticky afterglow of indecision.
Much as we would like to believe the paper is all but done as soon as we find a thesis, it is rarely so quick or so easy. The more difficult hours are usually still ahead of us, when we already have the warm sense of discovery and completion, and yet still have to get through the fussy business of making everything clear to someone else. But when we can translate that bright, euphoric moment when everything clicks into a cogent explanation, the results are extraordinary and lasting. Though the dripping trees and the spring air beckon, staying indoors is not always the worst thing in the world — after all, who would say no to bottled sunshine?
As a Writing Center Fellow, I believe that good writing is necessary in all fields. However, it can be easy to conceive of writing (as I’m sure most people do) as an inherently humanistic act or practice. Writing in STEM fields is only a necessary way of communicating ideas, not intrinsically part of the discipline.
However, as I read G.H. Hardy’s essay “A Mathematician’s Apology” and Karl Popper’s lecture “Science: Conjectures and Refutations” for ENG 401 Literature and Science, I discovered that both Hardy and Popper describe “good” mathematical and scientific ideas in ways strikingly similar to how we at the Writing Center describe good theses. The foundation of a good argument, it seems, is consistent across disciplines, and we can use the standards provided by Hardy and Popper to inform our writing as much as our scientific or mathematical research.
In “A Mathematician’s Apology,” Hardy discusses what makes a mathematical idea “significant.” Hardy writes: “We can say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is ‘significant’ if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas” (89). While we can quibble with exactly what Hardy finds significant or not in his essay, this basic definition of significant — “connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas” — can be useful when thinking about a motivated thesis. Ask yourself: Does your thesis connect to a larger conversation of ideas? What exactly does it illuminate in that conversation?
In “Science: Conjectures and Refutations,” Popper articulates what makes a theory or idea “scientific” (versus “pseudo-scientific”) and, like Hardy, describes a good thesis statement in the process. Popper summarzies his conclusions in one line: “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability” (37). Here, Popper describes an essential element to a strong thesis: arguability. For a thesis to be good, someone must be able to argue against it; it cannot describe a factual state of being. Theses which rely heavily on plot summary or observable facts tend to veer into inarguable territory. Check yourself by asking: is there a counterargument to my thesis? If I had to write another paper disagreeing with myself, what might I say?
Hardy’s definition of a “significant” mathematical idea and Popper’s conception of a “scientific” theory can be used to understand what makes a good thesis. These criteria relate to Keith Shaw’s four-step thesis test:
Is the thesis arguable? Can a reasonable person argue against it? Popper uses this standard for determining whether a theory is scientific.
Is the thesis manageable? Is it responsive to the evidence at hand and suitable for the size/length of the paper?
Is the thesis interesting? Does it address a question/puzzle/contradiction and go beyond the obvious?
Is the thesis important? How is the claim significant in the context of the field? Hardy uses the term “significant” to describe an important mathematical idea.
The questions we ask at the Writing Center about what makes a good thesis statement are the same questions mathematicians and scientists ask about what makes a good argument in their fields. Rather than simply a form of communication, argumentative writing is in the same category as scientific hypotheses and mathematical theories, another form of the effort to argue and prove a new way of thinking about the world.
— Paige Allen ’21
Sources
Hardy, G. H.. A Mathematician’s Apology, Cambridge University Press, 2012. ProQuest
Recently, a friend of mine
approached me at dinner and asked if he could ask me some questions about my
writing process. He explained that he had a five-page essay due in three days
and had yet to start—a predicament typical of a busy Princeton student. He asked
how he could streamline his writing process to make the most use of what little
time he had. I took this opportunity to explain to him my routine, which I have
optimized over the last several years.
My approach to writing every essay
is the same. First, I begin by reading the prompt. Second, I create an “idea
map”—a brainstorming visual—and research my subject simultaneously. Third, I
transition from that idea map into a traditional essay outline. Fourth, I draft
my essay, relying heavily on my outline before my fifth and final step of
editing.
This is not a novel workflow process;
however, I believe that I differ from the norm in my emphasis and execution of
step two—creating an idea map. Many people skip this step altogether, believing
that it is an unnecessary prerequisite to a traditional outline or that it is
ineffective and therefor unproductive. I would argue the contrary: an idea map
can be a brilliant use of time if properly executed because it can not only
help you immediately transition from reading the prompt to formulating an
argument, but it can also help you tremendously in the research process by
providing you with specific points and concepts to explore.
In order to show this progression
effectively and clearly, I will be referencing and dissecting and essay I wrote
on the Civil War. Hopefully, this essay be a resource to other students struggling
to write as quickly and efficiently as this university demands, or to those
simply looking for new writing tactics.
The prompt of my history essay was
incredibly simple: What caused the Civil War? As is important for any essay,
breaking down the prompt and identifying and comprehending each of its elements
is vital. This prompt, however, only contained one requirement: identify (and
argue) the cause of the Civil War. Recognizing that this prompt was so open ended,
my intention with my idea map was to find an answer that was narrow, focused,
and nuanced, in the hopes of differentiating my argument from the vast
scholarly discourse regarding the Civil War.
As noted by the circled “1” in
Figure 1, my initial answer to the question posed by the prompt was simply
“slavery.” I immediately broke down the cause of slavery into subcategories,
asking myself the questions, “Why did Slavery exist in the South? And why was
it so important?” Still having yet to conduct any research, I answered my
questions broadly using ideas from my class, referencing economic and social factors,
as well as my own idea of “guilt.”
From this stage, I drew arrows to
new places on the page in which I could further break down those sub-causes. I
began by looking at the economic reasons why slavery existed in early America
and in the American South (Figure 1, Number 2). I divided this economic section
in half, deciding to investigate both the economic benefits and detriments of
slavery. Now that I had specific categories and a narrower focus, I skimmed my
course readings for the implications of slavery on the Southern economy and extracted
relevant points to formulate a list on my idea map. Once completed, I observed
this list and looked for any irregularities or puzzles which could be the
source of my motive. What I found odd recognized was that though the Southern
economy was booming from the free labor slaves provided, their dependency on
slavery also caused them to miss the industrial revolution that swept through
the North. That is, the South was seemingly ignorant to the fact that the very
institution upon which they relied was also causing them economic harm.
Then, I expounded on the social
consequences of slavery with the intention of exposing why Southerners let
themselves be dependent upon something so detrimental and globally unpopular as
slavery (Figure 1, Number 3). Like before, I turned to my sources to find
pertinent points about how slavery affected southern social life. The result of
this research was likewise interesting; slavery had created a social hierarchy
dependent upon and segmented by race rather than economic class, education
level, or any typical defining factor of a societal ladder.
Now I turned to my final subcategory
of “guilt”—an idea of which I had yet to derive any true meaning (Figure 1,
Number 4). Before I could explore and research this section, I had to narrow
down and define this idea. As displayed in Figure 1, these questions all took
the form of “what if?” because I didn’t yet know if any of these questions and
ideas had any merit among scholars. After these questions, however, I had a
research area—the Southern attitude regarding slavery. I found within my
sources a pattern of Southern justification for slavery, most often in the form
of religion, i.e. that slavery was a god ordained process, giving white men the
task of ruling an inferior race. The puzzle was virtually complete.
Under the section at the top of the
page written as “Conclusion,” I tied my findings from each category together
(Figure 1). I concluded that economically, slavery created a vast divide
between the north and the south in trades, crafts, and exports. Likewise, I
added that this divide permeated from economics into social dynamics, as Southern
life was dominated by a racial hierarchy less existent in the North. Finally,
from my own idea of Southern guilt, I added that to abandon slavery in the
South was to admit it as a mistake and a wrong-doing, and to do so would be to
yield the moral high ground to the North—a rival ‘nation’ already thought of by
Southerners as arrogant and overbearing.
Figure 2 My outline for my essay on the cause of the American Civil War, based upon my idea map in Figure 1.
With my argument in a nascent—but
existent—state, I was now ready to transition into step three of my writing
process: the traditional outline. Creating an outline, however, is a very smooth
and easy process if one takes the time to create an idea map. The task of
creating an outline becomes finding the best way to structure ideas, rather
than having to generate them. As seen in Figure 2, my outline resembles the research
and logical progression of ideas that I already had in my idea map. I still had
to decide what context was necessary to orient my reader and to present the
‘puzzle’ I had explored in my idea map as a strong motive. Finally, I presented
my thesis that white fear and guilt was the final push that eliminated any
notion of compromise and caused the South to go to war with the North.
The purpose of this piece is not to highlight the argument of my history essay or laud my writing process. Rather, it is to show in detail how I go about breaking down a prompt and brainstorming in the form of an idea map before drafting a traditional outline. Hopefully, I have shown how you may use this approach successfully as well. Starting an essay is often the most daunting and lengthy part of writing an essay, but having a routine and formula can make this process easier, more efficient, and less daunting, even if—like my friend—you only have a couple days to get it done.
When
thinking about ballet, most people picture scenes of ethereal leaps and
turn-sequences, all performed by ballerinas donned in their tutus and pointe
shoes. While certainly not an incorrect notion, it is definitely not
all-encompassing of the art form: ballets simultaneously attempt to combine
music, dance, and plot to create coherent stories. It is not unlike how a good
paper strikes a structured balance between our beloved lexicon terms, which I
was reminded of this Reading Period.
While
recently watching dance clips on YouTube as a mode of procrastinating from
studying and finishing my term papers, I was reminded of the ballet Giselle, a seminal work in the classical
repertoire. Giselle shares much in
common with its romantic predecessors, as its protagonist Giselle falls in love
with a man named Albrecht. However, the story takes a dark turn in the infamous
“Mad Scene,” where Giselle discovers that her beloved Albrecht is in fact a
prince who is engaged to another, causing her to die of a broken heart at the
end of Act I. Inspired to watch the ballet in its completion, I was struck by
how composer Adolphe Adam manifested our conceptualization of key terms into
his score. More specifically, Adam utilized leitmotifs as themes to denote
specific characters, objects, or feelings. These musical motifs are exactly
what we in the Writing Center refer to as key terms: a paper’s primary terms or
concepts. By defining these musical renderings of key terms early in Act I of
his ballet, Adam conditions the audience to recognize his leitmotifs, in turn enabling
them to follow the themes of the ballet as the plot progresses.
This can be seen most evidently in the leitmotif that characterizes the relationship between Giselle and Albrecht, one that is filled with love yet also bitter deceit. This leitmotif is established during their first interaction in the coveted “Flower Scene” of Act I, a moment that unites each of their individual character-based themes into a single, combined leitmotif. Listen to the leitmotif in this video, starting at 7:55. Adam reuses this theme throughout the ballet, ultimately preparing the audience for the pivotal moment between Giselle and Albrecht, the “Mad Scene.” In this video of the “Mad Scene,” listen carefully at 2:12 for the same leitmotif. Through his use of leitmotifs, Adam continually reinforces the audience’s perception of the codependence between the score, themes, and plot. Adam’s utilization of leitmotifs in Giselle is a proficient model to understand how a paper’s key terms act like a thematic glue that ultimately guides the reader to a better comprehension of the writing at hand.
Polly Murray, in the 1960s and ’70s, was a mother of four with an old house on several acres in Lyme, Connecticut. In the summer, her kids built forts in the woods; they ice-skated on frozen cow ponds in the winter. The Murrays had an idyllic life in the country. They also had enormous rashes, strange joint swellings, and recurrent fevers.
[…]
Soon, though, Murray started to hear other stories like hers. Her area, it appeared, had a cluster of juvenile-rheumatoid-arthritis cases. She called the state’s health department and met with Dr. Allen Steere, a rheumatologist doing a fellowship at Yale. He pored over her pages of notes. On the car ride home, Murray wept with joy: Steere didn’t have any answers, but he had listened. He wanted to find out what was wrong. By 1976, the condition Murray had observed had become known as Lyme disease.
“Lyme disease was a disease born of advocacy,” Dr. Paul Auwaerter told me. Auwaerter, whose lab focuses on Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, is the clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Back in the ’70s, Murray and her fellow Connecticut mothers had to fight for attention. Their experience left behind a powerful legacy, Auwaerter said, a sense that perhaps “the medical establishment didn’t really listen initially or were trying to be dismissive.”
Decades after Polly Murray kept her diary of symptoms, the spirit of advocacy associated with Lyme disease endures. But while Murray’s efforts were ultimately vindicated by medical science, a new fight — for the recognition of something known as “chronic Lyme,” which can encompass a vast range of symptoms and need not be linked to any tick bite — has grown into a phenomenon often untethered from scientific method or peer review. The chronic-Lyme community has a new agenda, one that was visible at last fall’s Global Lyme Alliance Gala in New York, where supporters gathered at Cipriani heard a speech from Real Housewife of Beverly Hills Yolanda Hadid.
Longform
journalistic piece are, as their name suggests, long. The ones I am talking
about take at least half an hour to read and are often crafted non-linearly,
requiring the reader to pay attention, actually exert him or herself, as
opposed to needing only a cursory browse the way a news story or a short
opinion piece might. Writers, for their part, can spend months, even years,
researching, reporting, and writing these pieces.
Because the
topics are generally out of the public view, the title may not be immediately
motiving to a reader. So the onus on the writer to keep the reader engaged, to
have them read from start to finish with the attention such a piece requires,
becomes crucial within the first several paragraphs in a way that makes it
unique from other forms of journalism.
One of my
favorite articles from this summer is by Molly Fischer. The article is called
“Maybe It’s Lyme. What happens when illness becomes an identity?” The article
was sent to me by a friend, so despite knowing nothing about the topic, I
decided to start it anyway. I think it does a phenomenal job of introduction by
suffusing it with motive—with what makes the topic at hand interesting, with
why the reader should continue reading.
Immediately
we are taken with an idyll and its strange, pathological underbelly, a mystery
that needs an answer. And even where one is given at the end of the second
paragraph cited, we find that that answer is itself the starting point that has
since burgeoned into many more questions. By giving the history of the
discovery of Lyme disease, the author is able to not only define her most
central term but to contextualize it especially as its definition is repeatedly
challenged and complicated. In this way, Fischer is able to use her key term to
further motivate her article, carefully and seamlessly integrating her
instantiations of the two lexicon terms.
I recently saw the movie Bombshell, a dramatization of the events surrounding the charges of sexual harassment raised by several woman against former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. As I watched Bombshell, I was struck by how the filmmakers used techniques like orienting and key term definition to structure the film.
The opening sequence of Bombshell, narrated by then-anchor Megyn Kelly (played by Charlize Theron), orients viewers to the world of Fox News as represented in the film. Kelly guides viewers around the building, pointing out the different studios and teams at work. Kelly uses a visual aid, a model of the skyscraper in which the studios are located; certain floors on the model light up as she explains what is located on each floor. This sequence orients the audience to the structure of Fox News, just as a good writer orients readers by forecasting the paper’s structure and laying the groundwork for the “world” (of arguments, scholars, texts, etc.) to be explored in the paper.
In addition to orienting us to Fox News through Kelly’s tour and commentary, this opening sequence defines several key terms that appear later in the movie. For example, Kelly tells viewers that “the second floor” means Ailes, as the CEO’s office is located there. This key term definition primes the audience for later scenes when employees are told “the second floor is calling” or “the second floor wants to see you.”
Importantly, orientation and key term definition in Bombshell are not limited to the first scene. Over the course of the movie, as new characters are introduced, their names and roles (such as “Fox news anchor” or “wife of Roger Ailes”) appear on the screen beneath them. This strategy of visibly identifying characters as they appear mirrors another strategy of good writing: knowing how to orient throughout a paper. Not every key term, source, or scholar needs to be defined and introduced during the first paragraph of an essay. Good writers are able to discern which concepts need to be introduced first, in the opening paragraph, and which can be introduced as the paper goes on, in the context of the larger argument.
Bombshell orients viewers and defines key terms strategically at the opening of the film and as the movie progresses. As you consider how best to orient readers to your writing, consider the following tactics:
Forecast the structure of the paper
Introduce the most important aspects of the “world” at the start of the paper
Use a visual aid if helpful
Define key terms clearly
Decide which orienting and defining must occur in the first paragraphs and which can occur later in the context of the paper
On
December 3 2019, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin shocked
the technology sector by resigning from their roles as CEO and President
of Alphabet, Google’s parent holding company, respectively. Such an
immense and symbolic change in leadership at one of the largest
companies in the world could very well raise significant concerns
regarding the future of the company among employees and the general
public. However, Page and Brin excellently frame this change as the
natural and necessary next step in Google’s evolution in a joint blog
post announcing the leadership change by employing a methodology that
draws heavily upon many of the company’s founding documents.
Immediately
at the beginning of the post, Page and Brin present an excerpt of their
first founders’ letter to highlight Google’s mission, core service and
company values, and they proceed to argue that these core tenets have
persisted throughout the company’s history and continue to do so. In so
doing, the two technology visionaries abstract the company’s livelihood
from their personal involvement with the company; while Google
originally depended on Page and Brin to shape the company, the initial
roadmap created by the two founders has continued to shape company over
the years. This continuity is inherent to Google’s mission as a company
and not directly tied to Page or Brin.
Having
drawn a distinction between the involvement of the founders within the
company and the company’s livelihood, Page and Brin go on to present an
excerpt from a second founders’ letter that compares the evolution of
Google to that of a human being. The founders eloquently argue that the
company has reached young adulthood and that it is time for them to
“assume the role of proud parents.” By drawing a comparison between the
change in leadership and the natural life cycle of a human, Page and
Brin frame a seemingly monumental shift in company history as a natural
occurrence, arguably a non-event. This is further compounded by the
extension of a metaphor originally created 15 years ago. Through this
methodology, Page and Brin reassure Google employees and the general
public that the company is well poised to continue to execute its
mission and that their resignation is the natural next phase in Google’s
progress as a company.
“Google
is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.
Throughout Google’s evolution as a privately held company, we have
managed Google differently. We have also emphasized an atmosphere of
creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate
and free access to information for those who rely on us around the
world.”
We believe those central tenets are still true today. The company is not conventional and continues to make ambitious bets on new technology, especially with our Alphabet structure. Creativity and challenge remain as ever-present as before, if not more so, and are increasingly applied to a variety of fields such as machine learning, energy efficiency and transportation. Nonetheless, Google’s core service—providing unbiased, accurate, and free access to information—remains at the heart of the company. […]
“Google
was born in 1998. If it were a person, it would have started elementary
school late last summer (around August 19), and today it would have
just about finished the first grade.”
Today,
in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21
and it would be time to leave the roost. While it has been a tremendous
privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the
company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud
parents—offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!
Ah Thanksgiving, a time to
overindulge in turkey and stuffing, celebrate what you are thankful for with
loved ones, and inevitably find yourself trapped in some politically-charged
conversations with that one relative you see twice a year who insists on
starting a dinner-table debate. As
someone who usually prefers to remain on the observing side of these arguments,
I had ample time at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner table to observe the
lexicon at play.
And, with the lexicon in
mind, I noticed the following: some of the discussions (which somewhat quickly
and frequently become debates) feel productive, engaging, and meaningful, where
different people at the table are interested in hearing the ideas of others and
expressing their own counterpoints or concessions to those ideas. Other discussions feel draining and pointless
with the same two people going back and forth in circles while the rest of the
table exchanges annoyed glances, waiting for the conversation to move
elsewhere.
So what is the key differentiating
factor at play? I think it has to do
with motive, namely whether the person initiating the argument is doing so just
for the sake of argument or whether they have a convincing case for why
everyone at the table should be interested in and care about that
discussion. In other words, just as is
the case when we engage in a scholarly debate when we write, the person who wants
to start a debate at the dinner table has to consider and defend the “so what”
of the debate they want everyone to engage in for it to become a meaningful,
dynamic discussion.
When my Uncle mockingly said to me, “Hmmm let me guess; you’re either voting for Warren or Bernie,” he was just trying to be snarky. He was asking me to engage in an argument without giving me any reason to care about engaging with him. On the other hand, when my cousin pointed out how strange it was that we were troubled while watching a documentary about the consequences of meat consumption but then were content to feast on an array of animal products, everyone became interested in arguing the proper way to explain or solve this tension. My uncle posed an argument to me that had no motive; my cousin posed a puzzle to our dinner table that encouraged people to come together to offer solutions. And in turn, the former conversation ended quickly without any interesting sharing of ideas, while the latter conversation evolved into an exciting, meaningful debate.
It sometimes happens during the research process that I come
to a point where I think I know what I should propose or argue, but I can’t see
how to prove or disprove it. This happens fairly often when I’m writing papers
in the humanities, but even more so when I am trying to solve a problem in
mathematics. In fact, I ran into this issue while trying to prove one of the
claims on my most recent math assignment. The goal was to prove the following claim:
(I
include the claim for completeness, but it’s not terribly important.) My first
step was to reduce the claim to a statement that seemed easier:
which I
was able to do just by using the information given in the problem. After that, I
was able to get nearly three-quarters of the way through the proof just using
the given information. Then I ran into
something I knew should work, but wasn’t able to verify:
Because
I already knew what I was trying to prove, I was able to use the assumptions I
described above to complete the problem (more or less). There was still a hole
in my argument, but I was able to construct a solid “scholarly
narrative” for the problem (that is, finish the proof) by carefully delineating
what I understood and where my understanding went off a cliff. Writing out
exactly what I thought was wrong also told me what I needed to learn the next
time I worked on the topic — effectively, it told me what further research I
needed to do. So, even though I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, I was still
able to decide what I would need before I made a second pass over the problem.
There are, of course, several caveats to what I have said thus far. First, in this case, I knew that my overall claim was correct, so I was confident I should be able to jump over the hole in my reasoning and complete my argument. In general scholarly writing, we don’t know with certainty that our thesis is correct, so a question like the one above could throw the entire premise of the argument into doubt. The second caveat is that clearly, my argument couldn’t have been called “complete” while containing the excerpt above. Since there was a hole in my argument, I hadn’t really proved anything yet. Indeed, the kind of serious gap in understanding displayed above was only permissible because the homework assignment was the equivalent of an early draft.
But despite these two cautionary notes, annotating incomplete arguments as I do above has often proved helpful (and necessary) for me in both mathematics and the humanities. By whittling down the “unknown” part of the problem to a single nugget that we are not equipped to attack with our current tools, we mark the bounds of our own knowledge, and in doing so, lay the groundwork needed to push those bounds even further than before.
Samin
Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat is just one of many cooking shows available
for binge watching on Netflix’s online streaming platform. Nosrat’s approach,
however, stands out—unlike many shows, which simply display certain recipes or
exotic cuisines, Salt Fat Acid Heat aims to teach viewers the basic
principles of cooking. Based on Nosrat’s cookbook of the same name, Salt Fat
Acid Heat is a cooking show with a methodology, evidence-based approach,
and thesis, which shines through in the title of the show itself. Nosrat claims
that by understanding these four basic elements of food, viewers will not only
gain an intuitive sense of good cooking, but they will know a bit more about
what makes cuisines from around the world so delicious.
At first
glance, Nosrat’s methodology appears very similar to other travel-based cooking
shows. She visits one country in each episode, focusing on a specific element
of cuisine: “Salt” brings her to Japan, “Fat” to Italy, and
“Acid” to Mexico. Along the way, however, Nosrat’s approach is
uniquely shaped by her thoughtful accumulation of evidence. In Japan, she
visits a salt vendor, a traditional soy sauce manufacturer, and a woman who
makes her own miso at home. She explains to her viewers how the differences
between types of salt can make certain dishes, flavors, or types of seafood
shine in Japanese cooking. When discussing how fat is an essential component of
good food, Nosrat focuses on how olive oil shapes Italian cuisine. She briefly
mentions, however, how different choices have shaped other cuisines—food in the
American South uses a lot of animal fat, for instance, while French food is
defined by the flavor of butter. Her discussion of acid is particularly
illuminating, because this is an element of cooking that’s particularly hard
for most people to pinpoint. Nosrat starts the episode in a fruit market in
Mexico. She shops for different types of citrus, which is the most immediate
association people have with acidity. Over the course of the episode, however,
Nosrat shows how other elements of Mexican food like sour cream, vinegary
salsa, and honey also provide a delicious acidic zing that can transform a
dish. Nosrat’s evidence-based approach allows her viewers to follow her
reasoning and intuitively understand her claims.
In the final installment of the show, “Heat,” Nosrat develops the evidence she’s accumulated in her travels into her final thesis about intuitive and informed cooking. She returns home to California in this episode, combining her travel experiences with her Iranian roots and time spent as a chef at Chez Panisse. Nosrat cooks a variety of dishes, including short ribs, steak, fava bean and roasted vegetable salad, and tag dig rice. Each of these meals combines her learnings about salt, fat, and acid with her final element of applying heat—the very essence of cooking. This episode serves as Nosrat’s thesis, demonstrating that with an intuitive sense of these flavors and elements, anyone can learn to be a great cook. Her argument brings simplicity and elegance to the often-intimidating realm of gourmet food.
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